Hi all,

After the awesome advanced image editor, Pixel at http://www.kanzelsberger.com. Now, FPC is officially used as backend compiler for another great product, Morfik at http://www.morfik.com. Congratulations! :)

PS. Morfik's logo for FPC is nice. ;)

-Bee-

has Bee.ography at:
http://beeography.wordpress.com

We know about it. We cooperate with Morfik :-)

Michael.

I knew about it too as I'm a member of Morfik Pioneer. Just want to share a good news to others who doesn't know yet about Morfik. :)

-Bee-

has Bee.ography at:
http://beeography.wordpress.com

I knew about it too as I'm a member of Morfik Pioneer. Just want to share a good news to others who doesn't know yet about Morfik. :)

Thanks for the heads-up, but the site at Morfik can use a little work to convince potential customers:

1) On the home page, the Flash takes precedence over the drop-down menues, so only the first 2-3 items are visible.

2) On the download page, the size of the page doesn't adapt to the contents, so at least three of the text boxes show incomplete information. (This is on Firefox 1.5.0.9, with the minimum text size)

3) Even though there's a Linux logo at the bottom, I can't find a Linux version to download. (Maybe that has to do with 2))

4) I cannot find how to send anything to the Morfik site (no evident feedback address or form), so I can't report these things (maybe registering is needed?)

This is just meant as constructive criticism...

John
PS: The static FPC logo is nice, but yells for an italic font for the 'free pascal' text to convey the 'speed'.

1) On the home page, the Flash takes precedence over the drop-down menues, so only the first 2-3 items are visible.

I use FF 1.5.0.11, all menues are fine.

2) On the download page, the size of the page doesn't adapt to the contents, so at least three of the text boxes show incomplete information. (This is on Firefox 1.5.0.9, with the minimum text size)

Yup, a known issue since the beginning.

3) Even though there's a Linux logo at the bottom, I can't find a Linux version to download. (Maybe that has to do with 2))

Morfik IDE runs ONLY on windows platforms but the executable output can be run on other platforms via cross compilation. This is where FPC shines. :)

4) I cannot find how to send anything to the Morfik site (no evident feedback address or form), so I can't report these things (maybe registering is needed?)

Correct, registration is required. I believe there's a "Register" item on the top menu.

PS: The static FPC logo is nice, but yells for an italic font for the 'free pascal' text to convey the 'speed'.

Agree. :D

-Bee-

has Bee.ography at:
http://beeography.wordpress.com

Ok... Not interested, then. I can't imagine installing Windows to develop Linux apps. I'd never trust my machine again ;-)

John

That should be logically the next step for me: porting the Morfik IDE to Lazarus :-)

Michael.

That should be logically the next step for me: porting the Morfik IDE to Lazarus :-)

I even proposed a more "radical" solution for the next step: porting the Morfik IDE to a Morfik (web) app. ;)

Yes, I know it sounds very hard to do but I believe it's very possible as browser technology is getting more and more advance these days. This way, developers are able to develop (code, compile, debug, link, etc) remotely on a dedicated development server.

-Bee-

has Bee.ography at:
http://beeography.wordpress.com

You'd need a gigabit connection for that. There are far too many actions. Code completion for instance would take forever.

And: in practice, there are only 2 browsers that more or less work for web apps, and even then... I would never trust that.

Michael.

I even proposed a more "radical" solution for the next step: porting the Morfik IDE to a Morfik (web) app. ;)

I hope you don't mean 'over the web'. I just recovered my ADSL link, so I can start developing again? Not for me either.

Even with everything local, loading 75+M of Java to have a decent editor (which still isn't as decent as the one I use), doesn't sound productivity-enhancing.

John

Ajax has nothing to do with Java applets.

Michael Van Canneyt wrote

You'd need a gigabit connection for that. There are far too many actions. Code completion for instance would take forever.

Not necessarily. Type e.g. some words in the search box at http://livesearch.alltheweb.com/

and see how quickly the related search queries pop up below (requires IE or FireFox). The actual search results on the right takes longer, but a few megabytes of source code should be searchable at least as quickly as related search queries (and they appear pretty much instantly for me).

Jonas

> Even with everything local, loading 75+M of Java to have a decent > editor Ajax has nothing to do with Java applets.

No, I meant that a complete HTML based IDE would need a local editor, which I suppose wouldn't be written in Ajax (more correctly Javascript)?

John

You'd need a gigabit connection for that. There are far too many actions. Code completion for instance would take forever.

I don't think so. I've seen an ajax application that performs a similar operation to code completion on the web (I use ADSL connection) and it performs very well. Though it's not instantaneous but it doesn't take forever neither, it only takes about 2-3 seconds which is fast enough to me. I believe there some mechamisms/logics that could boost the performance.

And: in practice, there are only 2 browsers that more or less work for web apps, and even then... I would never trust that.

Due to the web app complexity, I think it'd be alright to target 1-2 specific browsers that able to provide advanced/required functions.

-Bee-

has Bee.ography at:
http://beeography.wordpress.com

I saw 2 threads in borland non-tech and references to slashdot about morfik patents:
"Subject: Morfik Patents AJAX Compiler"
Is that what you guys are celebrating?
I saw too that is a application patent not applyed yet, but I dee desagree with this kind of behavior, not yours, but from morfik, hope never need to use this software.

[]s

Cesar Romero

As soon as you sell general purpose software, you need patents, thought they are a pain, waste of time and money, and even most people don't like them. But you need them in commercial environment: First, to get investor's money. With patents you "prove" the investors that you're innovative. Investors usually know little about technology, they know only about money and numbers (while we (engineers/developers) don't know about money ;)). So they need some measure for your technology and the easiest are the number of patents you own.
Further, to protect you at least somehow against other companies which could sue you: you violate their patents, they violate yours. Cold war played with patents ...

Do you think Borland has no patents ?
Probably 10% of the lines of object pascal you write, will use a patent of Borland. For example, event handlers are patented.

Does that stop you from using Delphi or Object Pascal ?

Patents are a meaningless concept, and serve only to make money.

Michael.

Not to mention Microsoft, Apple and IBM software patents.